Hamptons Life

Ocean Dream

In the early 1960s, George Kraus first found himself in the Hamptons as a 20-something Dartmouth grad on the butt end of a years-long case of unrequited love.

In 1959, his college roommate, Dick, announced that he had a date with a girl named Patty. Mr. Kraus immediately remembered her as the kid sister of a high school friend from Rockville Centre, and proceeded to, “maturely,” he sarcastically noted, make disparaging remarks about Patty’s appearance.

“My roommate, Dick, said, ‘George, the ugly duckling has grown up to be a swan,’” Mr. Kraus recalled at his circa-1882 oceanfront home in Southampton last week. “And I said, ‘No, you have to show me that. I gotta see that for myself.’”

They all arranged to meet at a bar, and what happened next is a true story, Mr. Kraus said.

Patty walked in, greeted Mr. Kraus with a little squeeze and a noncommittal “Oh, hi,” before adding, “You’re just a big teddy bear, like Dick said.”

“She basically told me to get in line, and I did,” the 74-year-old laughed. “I pursued her; that’s why I ended up coming out here when she’d summer in the Hamptons because I was totally smitten with this girl. Sometimes I was a welcome guest, sometimes I wasn’t so welcome. But I finally ...”

“You can’t blame me, though. I was 17 years old. I mean, hello? Besides, Dick was awfully cute,” Ms. Kraus, now 70, said, and sighed, “Can you believe I married this goofball? It will be 49 years in December.”

“It’s been 49 wonderful years. It really has been. I’ve been lucky. Really lucky.”

And in more areas than one. The entrepreneur behind a wildly successful check-guarantee business (58,000 merchants once utilized his service), Mr. Kraus retired at age 50. The couple then took to the high seas for 10 years—frequently docking in Sag Harbor while summering on their 70-foot yacht, and wintering on the Gulf of Mexico at their home in Naples, Florida.

Mr. Kraus, an avid boater, wanted to upgrade to a 120-footer, but Ms. Kraus was concerned they’d “become gypsies,” her husband said. She wanted to plant her summer roots, and Mr. Kraus’ only condition was that they be on the water.

Shortly after Labor Day 1997, Anne Ford—daughter of automobile mogul Henry Ford—put her aluminum-sided Fairlea Drive home on the market. The Krauses were the first couple to see it.

“I came over here and I looked at this house and I said, ‘This is ugly,’” Ms. Kraus recalled. “I go, ‘Well, we’re going to South Africa for three weeks, and my husband and I will talk about it.’ George, being a visionary,” she said with a humorous edge, “is behind me going, ‘Oh no, we’re buying this house.’ I said, ‘Good negotiation, George.’ Literally, I was in the house maybe 20 minutes.”

“But I fell in love with the property,” Mr. Kraus said.

“I thought he was nuts,” his wife said.

On January 1, 1998, the couple closed on the 10,000-square-foot home, named “Ocean Dream,” for $5.5 million—the last bargain on the East End, Ms. Kraus said. She had a five-year plan for the house, but her husband shot her down.

“I said, ‘We don’t have very many five year plans left. So, why don’t we get started?’” he recalled.

What began as a $600,000 project turned into a much bigger renovation, the couple reported. But it was “all worth it,” Ms. Kraus said. They hired Water Mill-based architect William Sclight for the job.

“It’s not every day you get your dream project,” Mr. Sclight said during a tour of the house last week. “It was like we got to bring this house back to life.”

They began by revamping the house’s entry—or lack thereof. The home didn’t have a singular stairway connecting all three stories, so Mr. Sclight inserted one in the foyer, creating a sense of how the home moves vertically.

“And every room is designed to go outside,” Ms. Kraus said, and then joked, “because you want to throw them out.”